


My Body is a Temple, my Soul is Untainted

by titC



Series: Architecture [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: ...At least no one dies, DO READ THE WARNINGS, Dr Linda is awesome, F/M, Gen, I have dug a nuclear bunker to hide in, I will hate myself forever, I'm sorry I don't know what happened, Lucifer's angry, Read the warnings, Violence, alright then, also has a serious case of the feels, and stocked dried food and water to last a long time, are you still reading this, but Chloe's a fighter, but it's worse in a way, everybody will hate me forever, hopeful ending at least, not funny at all, talking about feels, this will ruin your day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:21:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7941145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Temples can be invaded.<br/>They can be rebuilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Body is a Temple, my Soul is Untainted

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings at the end.  
> You should probably check them out.
> 
> I'm posting it now before I chicken out. It's just 3,000 words that sort of oozed from my brain to the keyboard.  
> Unbelievable what short work deadlines make me accomplish, I guess.

They were supposed to meet that night behind a car repair shop, because she wanted to spend the early evening with her daughter and he had club-goers to entertain and it would have been a ridiculous detour for one of them to pick up the other. So he played some songs, danced with his guests, and unpeeled himself from an overeager couple and first went upstairs to change into an older suit – his clothes had too much of a propensity to be ripped, torn, burnt, or otherwise mangled when he was with the Detective to wear his very best for a stake out. She wouldn’t even appreciate it anyway. Also, she knew what he looked like under them, no need to do the tantalizing hint thing, right?

When he arrived, he saw her car half-hidden between a truck and a dumpster, but no sign of the woman herself. He got out of his Corvette and looked around, until he heard a muffled scream and a low growl and a snicker. He hurried to where the sound came from, and – good thing he _didn’t_ have his best suit.

Someone with his clothes, his hair, his _face_ was… No. He couldn’t watch it, and yet he couldn't not. He took it all in with a glance. _He_ was pinning her against the wall, tearing her clothes off, licking her – no. His hands. _No_. She was bleeding, he saw, he’d hit her. He’d _hit her_. Her gun was lying on the ground next to her, the muzzle crushed; she was struggling but unable to move him. Of course.  Ashmedai was much too strong for her. “Lucifer, stop it,” she said – trying to kick him, to free a wrist – he thought one of her shoulders was dislocated.

Lucifer didn’t stop to think. He surged forwards so fast Ashmedai didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell – hah – to see him coming. He tore him off her with one red, clawed hand and tore into him with the other, vicious and snarling and incandescent with rage – and literally,  too . He saw only fire, fire everywhere, the only thing  in his tunnel vision his demon,  _ his _ demon, who’d dared touch  _ his _ Detective,  and she was off limits to all, she was precious and pure and untouched and now – he thought he heard pants, gasps, choked breaths – but first, first he’d destroy, send him back down to be  tormented for ever by those he’d tortured; he tore off his fingers, his limbs; he drank in his screams and his begging and the dark dark ichor sluggishly staining the ground at their feet, until it had all melted through the concrete, dripped through soil and rock and lava all the way down to hell. They’d rebuild him there. He’d pay. He’d pay, he growled in  the mangled face.

When  he was finished with him, he turned back to the Detective. Her eyes were huge and unseeing, terrifyingly empty and shiny. He crouched to face her, remembering a bit late to let his features go back to what she was used to. And then he a l most went back to his hellish one, because – he’d used that face to assault her. But she wasn’t looking at him, she wasn’t looking at anything; her shaking hands were alternating between roaming the ground looking for, he assumed, her gun and trying to cover herself with bits of fabric. 

He didn’t dare touch her – he wanted to just take her and carry her to his car and bundle her in the cashmere throw he kept in the boot and destroy anyone and everyone who’d try to come near her and tell her she’d never ever hurt again. Never. But – he glanced heavenwards – that’s not how it worked, was it.

Keeping an eye on her, he called the director of a clinic he knew, very private and very comfortable and very quiet and very expensive. Yes, I know it’s late, he told her. You owe me, he said. She didn’t protest too much when he summed up what he’d stumbled upon. 

He waited for the ambulance, looking at the Detective from afar, not knowing what to do – when he got near enough to remove the mangled gun from her vicinity, she yelped and tried to disappear into the wall and her hands scrabbled on the dirty gravel and he ran back further away. She had the same reaction when he tried to talk to her, even changing the pitch of his voice, his intonation – his accent. He heard her too; heard she couldn’t breathe, heard her whistling gasps and sometimes the high-pitched whine that escaped her. He’d seen people like that, before. A century ago in France. Much, much longer ago in XVth century Spain. Countless other times.

He watched the EMTs approach her carefully, soft voices and slow movements and such gentleness… when one of them turned to talk to him he fled.

 

Bright and early the next day – or maybe simply later in the morning – Dr Linda opened her office to find him sitting on her sofa, chain-smoking and surrounded by such a noxious (her word,  not his ) cloud she left the  landing door open in the hope that it would help clear the air. The windows wouldn’t be enough, apparently.

“Lucifer?”

“Doctor.” She raised her eyebrows. Right, he usually started speaking even before settling on the couch. “I need to ask you a favour.” She waited patiently. “Could you go… see the Detective?”

“See her?”

“She… she’s in a clinic.”

“Can’t you go visit her yourself?”

Probably not, he thought. He had my face.  _ My face _ . “I don’t think she’ll want to see me.”

“Did you do something to her?”

Yes. “Not exactly. But.”

She looked  m ore and more worried. “Lucifer, what happened?”

“I…” He couldn't tell her. He didn’t want to think of it, he wanted to erase it from his mind; it was poison and venom and death, death through his veins and his brain and there, there – he thought he didn’t have a heart anymore but now he knew. There was something where his heart should have been, and it was black and shriveled and twisting and burning like the coldest pit of hell and full of sharp sharp shards and –

“Lucifer?”

He startled, remembered to breathe. “Ah. Yes. Can you… go see her? As a professional. She’ll need help.”

“You said she’s in a clinic. If she needs therapists, they’ll find her a good one.”

“I trust you. Not… not anyone else.”

“And you want me to report to you.”

“Yes. No. Yes. I want to know how she is. I want… but.”

“You seem in shock. Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“Can you see her first?”

“Is what happened to her the reason you’re in this state?”

“Can you?”

“… I can try.”

He left her his card with a phone number, an address and “tell Dr  _ Rakotonirina _ I sent you” scribbled on it and fled.

 

When he got back to Lux, Maze was waiting for him at the bar. It had just been cleaned after the night’s revelry and debauchery, thankfully. He’d felt something acidic and bitter and horrible try to crawl up his esophagus when he’d walked through the detritus earlier.

“Brought the kid to school and called the father, as you said.” 

He ignored her and walked straight to the bar. He didn’t even take a glass. Why should he? He took it to the piano and sat on the bench, his fingers empty of music and  brimming with fury . He didn’t want to go upstairs. He could remember her there, next to him, smiling and kind and awkwardly butchering  _ Heart and Sound _ and hugging him before she left.

“So I’m your girlfriend's emergency nanny, now?”

He looked up at her. “ Ashmedai .” Her eyes widened. “I’d like you to go down. My brother can take you.”

“What about you?” He shook his head and clutched the bottle tighter. “What _happened_?” 

He wished they  would stop asking him that question. “Go. Think of it a nice vacation.”

She blow out a harsh breath through her nose. She’d do it, of course. She’d get answers he didn’t really want her to have, too; but what was he to do about it? “Do you want the Brittanies? They’re in LA this week. They’d be happy to – ” Even Maze could be afraid of him sometimes, it seemed.  He’d never seen this expression on her face before.

Or maybe  she was  afraid for him, he wondered a minute later when he heard her following the sound of his retching. He’d barely made it to the steel and cold marble stalls.

He went to his penthouse when her footsteps grew fainter, and holed up in a guest bedroom, the bed unused until today. One of the few places where she didn’t linger. He still found he couldn’t escape her; her image, her smell, her laugh, her hair and her courage and her eyes rolling skywards and her skin so soft. He wished he could go down to hell and rip Ashmedai to pieces all over again, and again, and again. And again.

He drank the entire bottle and watched the ceiling until it was night again, and then day.

 

He felt the mattress dip and swiveled his head to see Dr Linda sitting there and watching him.

“Hello, Lucifer.” She didn’t have her perpetual Mona Lisa therapist smile. “I’m not here as your doctor, but as… a friend, I guess.” She pursed her lips a bit – probably wondering about right and wrong and ethics or some such. “Your brother brought me here.”

He looked back at the ceiling.  He felt so full or rage he was paralyzed. Nothing could ever satisfy his lust for blood. Nothing. It could never  change what had happened.

“I saw Detective Decker. We talked a bit. She’s going back home tonight, she misses her baby girl.” She paused. “And she says thank you, too. I won’t be the one to help her through this because I'm really not distant enough, but…” Linda grabbed his head and turned it towards her. “You did a good thing there, Lucifer. It was a traumatizing experience. Her aggressor looked like you and it will take her some time to be comfortable with you. She told me she can’t see you right now, because she’s not sure how she’ll react. She wanted me to tell you that yes, she saw you; yes, she believes you; and no, she’s not afraid of you. I’m not sure what she meant, but I’m only the messenger here.”

Lucifer smiled. Messenger, heh. “So you're an angel.”

Linda tilted her head. “At least I  _ am _ bringing… good tidings. Good news.”

“I didn’t know you were into etymology, doctor.” He thought his lips might be quirking up a bit.

“Yes, well. Hidden depths. _No_ , please; no joke. You don’t even look like you’d find it amusing. I’d like you to come to my office soon. Today if you can. You’re not well either.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” Why wouldn't he be? Wasn’t he used to how low humans and non-humans could go? “You did a good thing, and you deserve good things, and I’m proud of you. As a therapist and as a friend. Now, go have breakfast, have a shower, get out into the sun, and I’ll see you _very soon_. Or I’ll sic your brother on you. ”

S he left him sputtering and indignant and already half standing up.

 

Days went by, and the Detective started texting him again.  _ Thank  _ _ you _ , they said.  _ I’m sorry I can’t say it in person yet _ . Or,  _ Trixie said she’d like to see Maze again _ . And  _ I managed to get my hands on the bill and you’re insane _ . Then,  _ what happened to him? _

After a week, she went back to work, her arm in a sling ( _ good thing I’d kept the one from when I got shot _ ) and soon angry at her colleagues treating her like fragile porcelain. 

She felt ashamed of not having been able to fight him off, angry at being ashamed of not being able to fight off a supernatural creature with demonic strength, and  trying to push herself into seeing Lucifer again. He kept away, though. She never suggested anything definite, and he trusted Linda when he’d advised him to let her decide.

_ I can’t see Trixie without being afraid for her, now _ , she’d also texted.

He always answered right away, said  _ you don’t need to _ and  _ I’ll send her to visit when she’s back if you’d like _ and  _ you know money’s not an issue _ and  _ he’s dealt with. Forever _ . When he didn’t know what to say, he sent pictures – animals and flowers and cityscapes and undersea marvels and all the wonders of the world his father had created for mankind. He found it comforting. He hoped she would, too. He wasn’t sure it worked.

 

A fortnight after her… after it happened, she sent _ I’m not afraid of you, Lucifer _ . And this time, he didn’t know what to answer. And  then  she sent,  _ I’m not afraid of the devil either _ . He looked at the message for – he didn’t know how long. He only knew he kept poking at the screen so it wouldn’t turn off, again and again. And then he emptied the battery. What was he supposed to answer? How?

_ meet me this afternoon in that coffee shop you like?  15h? _

H e went.

 

She was already sitting at a corner table, her back to the wall and her eyes alert and scanning the room when he entered. Her eyes widened for a second and he heard her quick intake of breath when he walked in, and he almost turned back and left and maybe he’d have gone straight  back  to hell if she hadn’t gestured at the two coffees in front of her. He sat down, stiff and uncomfortable and not sure of what he should do.

She looked up into his eyes and she said, “Thank you.” He gaped a bit. He had no words. There must be words. Why were they not here? “I’m sorry it took me so long, but – ”

“Don’t be sorry.” Words. He had words. Were they good words? “It’s… he targeted you because of me.” She must have realized it. She would tell him he was a danger to her, to her child. She’d be right. He put the mug back onto the table before it broke.

“Yes, probably.” Here it was. Coming straight at him, faster and faster and he was screaming inside, screaming as he had when hurtling though the sky and the earth and all of hell. “Lucifer, please. I know you’re upset after what happened. But do _not_ make me feel guilty for making you feel bad.”

He looked down at his hands. Hers  was not too far away. He wished he could touch her. “I apologize.”

She smiled, slightly bitter and sad. “You know, it’s not the first time some has tried to do that. Until then, I had always managed to get away.  To beat them away once or twice. Not this time.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“No, and I realize that. Took me some time to admit it, and it still really, really hurts.” He nodded. It was better than saying anything, probably. The wall behind her was very white. He could see some dust clinging to it, the painter’s brush strokes. “Earth to Lucifer.”

His eyes snapped back to her face, then his hands. “ I’m listening.”

“I know you are. What are you thinking?”

His fish impression was certainly very good. At least it felt so. “I can ask Maze to be your bodyguard. Get one for Beatrice. I can...”

“You can't protect me always. No one can. Absolute safety doesn't exist.”

“Detective – you can’t say that! I can… you’re wrong. My father should never, every have let his happen; why – it’s like padre, it’s like – you’re wrong. Wrong!” He almost choked on the words, there were so many clogging his throat and mouth and only a few short angry syllables got out. And then he heard silence, and he realized everyone was looking at them. He deflated. He shouldn't have lost his temper like that.

“Hey.” She knocked her coffee mug a few times on the table with her free hand as conversations resumed around them. “Hey. I’m glad you can still get mad at me. My coworkers are all walking on eggshells around me.”

“I’m not mad at you!”

“No, I know. I meant… you know what I meant.”

He hummed in agreement. Yes, he did. It was a good thing he had Dr Linda, really. She’d helped him so much in his understanding of people. Mankind.  Chloe. “Chloe.” There, he’d said it.

“You should say my name more often.” She looked outside for a few moments, readjusted her sling. “I’m not broken. I’m hurt, but I’m not broken.”

“I never thought you were. I just…” He floundered.

“I know what you wanted from me, Lucifer. I don’t know if you’ve changed your mind about it.”

“Why would I have…”

“And that’s why you should know I’m not ready to even consider it. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe never. But…” She took his hand in hers. He might have sent a prayer up. Sung a hymn, even. He remembered each and everyone of them. “We’re good. I like you, I really do. For some reason.” She winked at him. “I wish I could tell you that we’ll be working together next week, that I’ll yell at you but be secretly very amused the next time you say something outrageous, that I’ll half-expect you to be cooking omelets in my kitchen in the morning. Not quite right now, but… I'll get there. We'll get there. I promise.”

And maybe he could believe that.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings:  
> rape, sexual assault  
> violence


End file.
